Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has achieved one-third of its pledged goal of creating 100 million jobs in 20 years, as the e-commerce giant sees 2017 as a crucial year to "redefine the real economy".

The internet conglomerate, incorporating both its e-tail platforms and payment arm Ant Financial Services Group, paid 23.8 billion yuan ($3.42 billion) of tax in 2016 and has created a cumulative total of more than 30 million jobs since 2003, the Hangzhou-based firm said on Tuesday.

The figures echoed what company founder Jack Ma advocated as "blurring the lines" between real and virtual companies.

"A new form of economy has emerged to bring forth an enormous social effect. Alibaba will be a key player in this transformation," said Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer of Alibaba.

With China's employment rate surging, efforts by the likes of Alibaba in bringing employment flexibility into the economy should be well acknowledged, according to a report on job creation issued by Renmin University of China.

Alibaba also invested more than 100 billion yuan in traditional industries, from bricks-and-mortar retail malls like Suning Commerce Group Co Ltd to domestic couriers such as Shanghai YTO Express (Logistics) Co Ltd.

On the financial front, Ant Financial is empowering small and micro enterprises with easier access to loans. Its electronics payment platform Alipay has facilitated more than 600 million users globally to make payments and is quickly expanding into wealth management and credit scoring, based on big data backed by cloud technologies.

The cloud business, which is the latest area that Alibaba is actively venturing into, has maintained a three-digit growth rate over the past six quarters, making AliCloud in the same league as peer services such as Amazon.com Inc's AWS and Microsoft Corp's Azure.

hewei@chinadaily.com.cn